Overall: 18.5cm (7.2in) x 18cm (7in)
Provenance:
Philip Davies Cooke, FLS, FGS, FZS, FHS, JP (1793-1853), of Gwysaney Hall, Flintshire, High Sheriff of Flintshire (1824)
Philip Bryan Davies-Cooke, FSA, DL, JP (1832-1903), of Gwysaney Hall, Flintshire, and Owston Hall, Yorkshire.
Thence by family descent.
Napoleonic uniform relics collected from the Waterloo battlefield. Mounted on period card inscribed ‘Cockade / and buttons / found at Waterloo by / Philip Davies Cooke’, applied with an autograph label ‘Found at Waterloo’ beneath which is penned ‘My Father’s / writing / PBDC’ for the landowner and antiquarian Philip Bryan Davies-Cooke, comprising a First Empire polychromed and embossed leather shako cockade (diameter 68mm); five 1804 pattern cast brass buttons of the infantry of the Garde Imperiale (d17mm); a French naval officer’s officer’s gilt button (14mm); a silvered button of the 11e Régiment de Cuirassiers; an artilleryman’s button , and a button (26mm) ‘en laiton moulé doré’ of the Royal House of Kingdom of Italy (1804-1815).
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Philip Davies Cooke (1793-1815) was the scion of an ancient Welsh family seated a Gwysaney, Flintshire, since 13th century with landholdings in Yorkshire. His father was the MP for Malton, Yorkshire and Colonel of the 3rd West Yorks Militia. Born at the start of the French Revolutionary War, the young Davies Cooke and his upper class contemporaries were denied the opportunities of the Grand Tour as part of their education. The fall of Napoleon was thus to be relished and the site of his final defeat an important destination for such tourists.